Suppose it was true that Iran is helping insurgents in Iraq. I mean, wasn’t the United States helping insurgents when the Russians invaded Afghanistan? Did we think there was anything wrong with that? I mean, Iraq’s a country that was invaded and is under military occupation. You can’t have a serious discussion about whether someone else is interfering in it. The basic assumption underlying the discussion is that we own the world.”
Archive for the 'Imperialism' Category
Paul Jay interviews Noam Chomksy on U.S. policy toward Iran:
Like many Kiwis on the net I enjoy reading Russell Brown’s blog, Hard News, but every now and then something goes terribly terribly wrong.
It’s called a straw man and, if I recall correctly, it’s not the first time it’s been employed on Hard News:
I have no patience for the “war is hell” walk-away argument.
Well that’s great Russ but this is not the argument put forward by those serious about ending U.S. and British crimes in Iraq.
If you want a serious argument to throw around in your musings on Western crimes in Iraq can I suggest this response on the question of withdrawl from Noam Chomsky:
There is a certain principle that we should adhere to. The principle is that invading armies have no rights whatsoever. They have responsibilities. The prime responsibility is to heed the will of the victims and to pay massive reparations to the victims for the crimes they’ve committed. In this case, the crimes go back through the sanctions which were a monstrous crime, through the support for Saddam Hussein, right through his worst atrocities, but particularly, those of the invasion. Those are the two responsibilities of an occupying army.
Well, you know, the population has made it pretty clear. Even U.S. and British polls make that clear. Overwhelming majorities want the U.S. to set a timetable to withdraw and adhere to it. Britain and the United States refuse. Reparations, we can’t even talk about; that’s so far from consciousness in the doctrinal system. Well, I think that answers the question. Doesn’t really matter what I think. What matters is what Iraqis think, and I think we know that pretty well. The reason the U.S. and Britain aren’t withdrawing are those I mentioned. You know, the consequences of independence for Iraq would be an ultimate nightmare for them. And they’re going to try to do anything they can to prevent Iraqi democracy, as they’ve been trying in the past.
Update: Turns out I misunderstood Russell’s musings. See comments for clarification.
Kirk MacGibbon, a New Zealander living in New York, says that Kiwi’s are prejudice against Americans and that this comes from, amongst other things, “their limited understanding of American foreign policy.”
But we’re not the only ones to lack understanding. Much of the world misunderstands U.S. foreign policy, especially those who have to deal with it at the end of a gun barrel. Ordinary people just don’t seem to get that the U.S. meddles in and destroys their lives for their own good.
While the self-appointed World Ideology Police “fight terrorism,” or “rid the world of weapons of mass destruction” or, my personal favourite, “spread democracy and freedom,” the world stands by and simply misunderstands, or even fights back.
Worse still, it actually presumes to discuss such small inconveniences as:
- The genocide of the indigenous people of North America
- Murderous and cowardly bombing campaigns, including the hundreds of thousands bombed in Vietnam and Cambodia, and the hundreds of thousands fire bombed and nuclear bombed in Japan
- The long record of sponsoring crimes against humanity including regime changes that are against democracy (Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, the list goes on) and the support of dictators who protect U.S. private investment at the expense of the public interest in their own countries (aka predatory capitalism)
- Hostility towards and repression of alternative models of development that might challenge the “Washington Consensus” (again, a long list, see books below)
- The reserving for itself alone the right to wage permanent war on the world and justify it under a doctrine of “anticipatory self-defense” or preventive war.
- The reassertion of imperial power and the vitiation of international law.
- The encouragement given to other countries to develop nuclear weapons and terrorist networks as a deterent to U.S. aggression
- The use of Depleted Uranium tipped munitions, cluster bombs, fire bombs (aka Napalm) and now the prospect of new nuclear weapons
- Torture
- And oil (presumably we’re meant to believe the U.S. would have invaded Iraq had their economy been based on cabbage and potatoes)
And then the U.S. produces Presidents with attitudes like this:
I will never apologise for the United States of America, ever. I don’t care what it has done. I don’t care what the facts are.
—George WH Bush, Newsweek, 15 August, 1988
This was in regard to the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner on 3 July, 1988 by the USS Vincennes. All 290 civilian people in the aircraft were killed. The plane was on a routine flight in a commercial corridor in Iranian airspace.
But you see, it’s all because:
The United States is good.
We try to do our best everywhere.
—Madeleine Albright, The Washington Post, 23 October, 1999
Problem is the facts speak for themselves, or sometimes even those in power do:
In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. Secretary of State (i.e. head of foreign affairs), was asked by Leslie Stahl on Sixty Minutes what she felt about the fact that half a million Iraqi children had died as a result of U.S.-led economic sanctions. Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”
The following quote from a U.S. strategic planner in 1948 sums things up pretty well (paraphrased ruthlessly):
We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 of its population … In this situation … our real task in the coming period … is to maintain this position of disparity.
—George F. Kennan, 28 February, 1948
Perhaps if Mr MacGibbon spent less time hanging out in New York eateries watching Faux News and listening to those who hold the gun or stuff their faces while others do and instead travelled the world to talk to those at the end of the gun barrel he might come to a better misunderstanding of U.S. foreign policy like the rest of us.
Recommended reading:
- Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
- Rogue State: A Guide To The World’s Only Superpower
- On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality
Here’re a few points to keep in mind if you’re bothering to follow the current propaganda campaign being waged against Iran.…
Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and last year’s Nobel Peace Laureate, posited in 2004 that:
If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction.
Albert Einstein had some thoughts on this:
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
While Noam Chomsky—described by the New York Times as “arguably the most important intellectual alive”—contended in a recent lecture that:
Under the current U.S. policies, a nuclear exchange is inevitable.
The U.S., nuclear weapons and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
It’s worth recalling that no other nation in history has attacked another country with nuclear bombs other than the United States of America, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in the process.
It’s also useful to recall the official reasons given for invading Iraq: nuclear proliferation, terrorism and human rights abuses. As was widely predicted, the invasion of Iraq has increased terror, human rights abuses and nuclear proliferation. Exponentially.
In short, the United States of America is a dangerous rogue state, plagued by deceit.
While Washington cynically uses the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) against Iran to further its agenda of domination over the oil rich region of the Middle East, it does so having flagrantly rejected its own obligations under the treaty.
Being a signatory to the treaty the U.S. has a binding legal requirement to move towards “complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” But, as we all know, the United States of America is unique in the world in that the sun shine out of its ass and is thus exempt from international law and treaty obligations.
While none of the nuclear powers have lived up to their commitments under the NPT the U.S. is far in the lead in rejecting them and alone in officially rejecting them. Not to mention its open plans to develop new nuclear weapons.
Iran, nuclear weapons and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Obviously Iran has never attacked another country with nuclear weapons (or with any weapons for that matter), nor is it openly discussing plans to attack another country, unlike Israel (which has developed nuclear weapons and refuses to sign the NPT) and the U.S., both of which are openly discussing plans to bomb Iran.
By invading Iraq and rejecting it obligations under the NPT the U.S. has effectively encouraged Iran and other countries to develop nuclear weapons in an effort to deter the neo-conservative radicals. As Martin van Creveld—an Israeli military historian at the Hebrew University in Israel—puts it, after the invasion of Iraq, “had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.”
On the other hand Mohamad ElBaradei of the IAEA—the same man who warned that there were no nuclear weapons programs in Iraq—says there is “no evidence” of nuclear weapons programs or “diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons” in Iran.
Iran’s current activities, as far as the evidence is concerned, fall within its legal rights under the NPT, of which Article IV grants signatories the “inalienable right … to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”
Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Washington has demanded that Article IV be revised and restricted, and a good case can be made for that. The treaty was entered into force in 1970 and these days, with modern technology, being able to produce fuel for reactors is apparently just a step away from nuclear weapons. So restriction of Article IV is a sensible move.
Any revision of Article IV, however, would need to ensure unimpeded access to nuclear materials for non-military use, otherwise Washington’s call for restricting Article IV can be seen as nothing more than a “cynical intention to convert the NPT into a convenient instrument of U.S. foreign policy,” as strategic analyst and former NATO planner Michael MccGwire put it.
With this in mind Mohamed ElBaradei of IAEA made a reasonable proposal that production and processing of weapons-usable material should be restricted “exclusively to facilities under multinational control … acompanied … above all, by an assurance that legitimate would-be users could get their supplies.”
Only one country has officially accepted ElBaradei’s proposal: Iran.
On 16 February, 2006, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani stated that, “Should a credible international system for providing nuclear fuel be in place, the Islamic Republic of Iran would be ready to procure its nuclear fuel from that system.”
As Noam Chomsky has noted, implementation of ElBaradei’s proposal would “terminate the crises and be a great advance forward in preserving the species.”
Unfortunately that path is being blocked because of Washington’s flat rejection of ElBaradei’s proposal. Putting weapons-usable nuclear materials under multinational control would of course limit Washington’s unique authority to do whatever it likes.
And, in more serious news, Washington threatens to bomb Iran unless it will pull a rabbit out of its own ass.
Related:
External links:
A recent poll of 954 U.S. troops by Le Moyne College/Zogby International in Iraq shows that, while 58% say their mission is clear and 42% say the U.S. role is hazy, 85% say the mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” and 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”
This is similar to general U.S. public opinion, which polls in 2003 and 2004 indicated that 70% of Americans believed Saddam was involved with 9-11.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t even bother to question authority, let alone find out the easily verifiable truth.
It’s a trivial matter to dismiss the idea that Saddam was “protecting al Qaeda in Iraq,” and although they’ve mentioned Saddam, 9-11 and “al Qaeda” in the same breath over and over again, subtlely reinforcing the myth, even the Bush regime had to admit there was no link between Saddam and 9-11.
Truth is the first casualty of war.
Often uttered, rarely learned.
On the other hand 72% of those surveyed are perceptive enough to realise they should leave within the next year. At least that’s in line with Iraqi public opinion.
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